Ex-prosecutor says 'misjudged dates,' 'mistake' among reasons info on convicted state chemist's drug use wasn't sent to DAs

SPRINGFIELD -- Anne Kaczmarek, a former assistant state attorney general, testified Friday she didn't realize papers found in former state lab chemist Sonja Farak's car showed she had been using drugs more than a year before her arrest.

"I totally misjudged the dates," Kaczmarek, now an assistant clerk magistrate in Suffolk Superior Court, said at the fifth day of a hearing before Hampden Superior Court Judge Richard J. Carey dealing with fallout from Farak's criminal wrongdoing at the Amherst state drug lab, where she worked.

The mental health worksheets and Servicenet diary cards found in Farak's car after her January 2013 arrest had notations Farak had used drugs in "late December." Farak wrote down her drug use, including one time where she used drugs at work at the state laboratory in Amherst.

Kaczmarek said she assumed Farak's notations were for December 2012. She said she never realized that although Farak noted that Christmas fell on Sunday, that Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2011, not 2012.

She said "if I realized what it meant" she would have gone before a judge and gotten an order that she could turn over the records despite any concerns about privilege.

Lawyers for 10 drug defendants have said the state's failure to disclose Farak's mental health and drug treatment records is prosecutorial misconduct. They say the records would have thrown light on Farak's drug use, and that information would have affected their clients' drug cases.

The 10 defendants are looking for new trials or to withdraw their guilty pleas because Farak tested drug evidence in their cases.

In January 2014, Farak, then 35, of Northampton, was given an 18-month jail sentence after pleading guilty to four counts of theft of a controlled substance from an authorized dispensary (the drug lab), four counts of tampering with evidence and two counts of possession of cocaine.

Farak began using drugs from the lab as early as 2004, according to court documents released in May. The Amherst lab was closed due to her actions.

Carey has said he wants facts that would show whether state officials were busy with so much going on and there was an oversight about the records or whether state officials intentionally buried evidence that could have been exculpatory for the defendants.

Those records in question came to light in the fall of 2014 after Luke Ryan, lawyer for some of the drug defendants, was allowed to inspect evidence in the case. State police and the attorney general's office had had the records since searching Farak's car shortly after her arrest.

State officials repeatedly fought Ryan's request to look at the evidence.

Ryan asked Kaczmarek a number of questions to which she replied, "I don't remember." He then showed her emails she had written to refresh her memory.

A great deal of testimony has been about the circumstances surrounding multi-day hearings held in September 2013 by then-Hampden Superior Court Judge C. Jeffrey Kinder, who is now a state Appeals Court justice.

Kinder held the hearings to try to determine when Farak's misconduct at the lab began in order to see how far back drug cases might have been affected. Farak's role in the cases was to identify the drug and determine its weight.

Kinder was told at the 2013 hearings by then-Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster all material relating to Farak had been turned over to district attorneys.

Foster, now general counsel at the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, testified Tuesday she had been doing what her superiors ordered in her handling of the 2013 effort to quash subpoenas of a state police supervisor and all the records in the prosecution of Farak. Kinder had ordered those records be turned over.

She said she had no reason to doubt her superiors, who told her that everything from the investigation of Farak had been turned over to local prosecutors. She said she never looked at the Farak case file herself.

Under questioning from the judge Kaczmarek testified she never told Foster the entire file had been turned over to district attorneys. Foster had testified Kaczmarek did tell her that.

Kaczmarek said she didn't know how Foster could have represented to Kinder the whole file had been turned over without even looking at it.

The mental health and substance abuse treatment papers found in Farak's car were not turned over even though Kinder ordered all records be submitted to him.

Jared Olanoff, lawyer for some of the defendants, asked Kaczmarek if she thought she had any obligation to turn over the mental health records to the district attorneys.

"Yes, I suppose I had a certain obligation in terms of public interest," she said.

Asked why she didn't turn them over, Kaczmarek said, "I don't know. It was a mistake."

She said she didn't think it was her specific obligation within the office to see that the records were given to district attorneys.

The hearing ended Friday. The defense lawyers will submit briefs and the state will submit a brief by Feb. 17. Carey said he will hold hearings for each of the defendants to see how Farak's actions affected them.

He said by the end of February he will "hopefully" be in a position to "begin putting something together" in terms of his decisions.